


Lighthouse

by garbage_dono



Series: The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-War, caspar and linhardt get married every place they go like they're collecting bumper stickers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garbage_dono/pseuds/garbage_dono
Summary: Caspar and Linhardt make their way to Brigid and reflect on their travels thus far.They also discover that they bothhateboats.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Series: The Thousand Roads and Seven Seas [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652239
Comments: 15
Kudos: 155





	Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> More self-indulgent casphardt traveling content because their paired ending is hands down my favorite one in the game and I'll never be over it.

Linhardt stood at the edge of the dock, leaning on the railing and taking in a gentle ocean breeze. The ship waiting for them was a scheduled to depart in a couple of hours – it was a mid-sized craft with tall pointed sales that blocked the out the morning sun that was just starting to peek over the trees. He watched as it bobbed and swayed with the ocean waves washing up against the shore, rocking with the current.

He was starting to feel a bit queasy just looking at it. That didn’t bode well.

“Lin-“ A hand thwacked down against his back, familiar calloused fingers curling eagerly over his shoulder. “You’re not gonna back out now, right?”

Linhardt raised a brow as he turned to look, meeting Caspar’s eye. “I don’t have much choice, do I? There’s no other way to get to Brigid than by boat after all.” He sighed. “Why did they have to settle on an archipelago to begin with?”

“To spite you?”

“Clearly.”

Caspar snorted out a laugh, hand slipping from Linhardt’s arm as he leaned against the worn wooden railing beside him. “I’ve never been on a ship like that before. I mean sure, I took a ferry across a lake or two when I was little and went out fishing once or twice, but never on something like that.”

“You haven’t been missing much,” Linhardt groaned, feeling his stomach twist. “When I was young I went with my father on a trip once before. I can’t recall where…nowhere all that exciting, though I do remember a very impressive library in the city center. It was about a half a day’s journey by boat to get there though, and…” He grimaced. “Well, let’s just say I never strayed from the deck.”

Caspar’s hand landed on the small of his back, more gentle this time as he pressed a light kiss to Linhardt’s cheek. The stubble on his jaw and chin scraping against Linhardt’s skin made him shiver. “It’s just a day on the water,” he said.

“A _long_ day,” Linhardt insisted.

“We’ll be there by tomorrow morning.” Caspar grinned. “I’ll hold your hair back if it comes to that.”

Linhardt hoped it wouldn’t, but a feeling in his gut – both literal _and_ figurative – told him it would. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll hold you to that. I suppose it will all be worth it when we finally do make it to Brigid. Though Petra had better give us a royal welcome.”

He turned in Caspar’s arms, taking in the sight of his husband, sun-kissed and grinning. His messy, windswept hair was barely being held in place by the Almyran-crafted bandana wrapped around his forehead, and the beard that had once been nothing but a few patches of stubble was now growing in full and healthy along his jaw.

Linhardt let his hands meander along Caspar’s strong forearms, fingers tracing the thick cords of muscle under his tanned skin. “If Brigid treats me half as well as Almyra did you, I’ll consider myself lucky.”

Caspar rose a brow, a light flush of pink spreading over his cheeks. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” He tugged Caspar’s hands closer, placing them firmly on his own waist. “That rugged look is good on you.”

“You think it’s rugged?” Caspar squeaked.

“A bit.”

It took everything in him not to tug him in for a deep kiss right then and there, standing on the dock with goddess-knew how many people able to see. He settled for dropping a peck on the tip of Caspar’s nose and grasping his hands. “They’re boarding before too long,” he said, tugging him toward the ship. “And I suppose we should get this over with.”

He could handle a little ship voyage, unpleasant as it may be. He had done far more terrifying things before today.

* * *

_“You sure about this, Lin?” Caspar asked him, staring down at the needles and inks laid out meticulously beside them. His eyes darted from the tools to the jars of dark ink to Linhardt’s exposed forearm, and he managed a nervous little laugh. “I never thought I’d see the day you of all people would volunteer to get poked with needles like this.”_

_He raised a good point, and Linhardt couldn’t deny he felt like there was a serpent twisting away in his guts as he watched the Almyran woman beside him carefully inspect her tools. The needle glinted in the light as she took it in hand. “It’s a simple matter of weighing the benefits and drawbacks,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady as he pulled his gaze away from the needle and fixed it on the wall in front of him. “When am I going to get another chance to experience a cultural practice like this?”_

_Caspar blinked. “Wow, Lin. That’s…really brave of you.” He leaned a bit closer. “It’s kind of sexy if I’m being honest.”_

_The woman with the needle cleared her throat, and Caspar turned a vibrant shade of pink. Something that made Linhardt chuckle despite his butterflies fluttering in his stomach. “I’m hardly the first one to be brave today,” he pointed out, glancing at the earring glinting silver in Caspar’s earlobe. That one had been Claude’s idea – apparently the woman getting ready to stab ink into his skin was the same one who had pierced Claude’s ear when he’d been young._

_According to her, he had been much less nervous at five years old than Caspar had been at twenty-eight, but that was beside the point._

_“Are you ready?” she asked him, hand on Linhardt’s arm holding his skin taught, ink-stained needle at the ready in her other._

_Linhardt took a breath and said, “As ever.”_

_He didn’t look down at it while she worked. Instead he kept his eyes closed, his head canted toward the ceiling with Caspar at his side, measuring his breathing in counts of seven. It hurt, yes – like hell – but all things considered, it was far from the worst thing he’d ever endured._

_“Caspar,” he said, voice clipped, eyes still closed._

_“Huh – yeah?”_

_Linhardt squeezed down on his hand as the needle came down again and again, so rapid that Linhardt wondered how on earth the woman managed to keep her hand from cramping. He manage to open one eye a crack, just enough to glance up at Caspar’s face._

_“Talk to me?” he asked. His voice was steady, his breathing slow. The pain was tolerable, but a distraction would help._

_“Oh, um…what should I say?”_

_“Tell me what else you want to do before we leave Almyra.”_

_Caspar thought it over for a moment, brow knitting as his lips pressed together into a thin line. “What else I want to do here…well, Claude said the hottest pepper in the world grows here in Almyra-“_

_“Oh, spare me, please,” Linhardt groaned._

_“You don’t have to eat it. Just watch me do it!”_

_“That’s what I want you to spare me from.”_

_Caspar pouted, but it only lasted a moment. In a flash the glint was back in his eye again, a smile spreading across his face. “We could get married.”_

_Linhardt arched a brow. “We’re already married.”_

_“Not here. Not in Almyra. The traditions are different and so are the laws, so technically…”_

_“You stopped being my husband the moment we stepped onto Almyran soil?”_

_The woman crouched over Linhardt’s arm snorted out a laugh and spoke for the first time since she’d started, as she moved to gather more ink on the tip of her needle: “You two certainly still seem plenty married to me.”_

_Still, Caspar made a compelling point._

_Caspar’s hands folded tightly over Linhardt’s as the needle touched his skin again, and Linhardt squeezed his eyes shut and held on. “I’ll marry you again,” he said. “But if you try and devour any of those hot peppers you’re so excited about at the ceremony, I’m leaving you.”_

_“Deal.” A beat, and Linhardt could hear_ _him grinning. “I’ll wait until after.”_

_If he moved his arm to thump Caspar on the shoulder, he’d certainly ruin the artwork being etched into his skin, so he settled for a loud groan and hoped that would get the point across well enough._

* * *

Caspar’s hand trailed along the fish etched into Linhardt’s forearm, fingers tracing the long, elegant tail that brushed his inner elbow. “Got all our things into the cargo hold,” he said. “You okay?”

“Well, we’re not out in open water yet, so for now…yes.”

“You know, some people grow out of things like seasickness,” Caspar offered, sounding only half convinced himself. “That’s…a thing, right?”

For a moment, just a moment, Linhardt considered that maybe he would get lucky. Maybe he would have grown some sea legs after all.

It took only an hour from when they pulled out of the port for him to realize how wrong he was.

Caspar, true to his word, held his hair back as Linhardt emptied the contents of his stomach into the churning ocean. The first time…and the second time…and the third time. By then, he was already sapped of any resolve he’d had to do anything other than lean against the taffrail. They port they’d just left was nothing but a speck on the horizon, and the one their destination was nowhere near visible at all.

A flask of water brushed against his fingers, and he forced his eyes open.

“It won’t stay down,” he said before Caspar could get out a single word.

“Try anyway,” Caspar insisted, and he offered a placating crooked smile. “Guess I should have taken you seriously when you said this would happen, huh?”

“I’ll admit to indulging in a bit of my own wishful thinking.” With a sigh, Linhardt gingerly swallowed a sip of water, fixing his eyes on the horizon and willing it to stay where it was. “If you want to go take in the sights, I won’t stop you.”

Caspar shrugged. “Nothing but water and more water in every direction. To be honest, it makes me a little uneasy…thinking about how there’s nothing below us but water…and sharks.”

“They’ll leave you be if you don’t antagonize them.”

“Ha _ha,_ ” Caspar sneered. He pressed a hand against Linhardt’s back, rubbing soothingly. “You feeling okay?”

“Better, with this.” He raised the flask to his lips again, taking a gamble on another sip. This one stayed down too, thank the Goddess. For now, at least. He tried not to think about the way a strong gust of wind caused the ship to rock, and instead focused on Caspar’s fingers carding through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. He sighed. “Thank you.”

“Hey, you’ve done the same for me before,” Caspar reminded him with a bright smile. “Just give me back the waterskin if you need to puke again. I’d rather you didn’t drop it into the ocean.”

“Duly noted.”

The two of them sank down to sit on the deck, backs against the well-worn wood and a warm breeze tickling their faces. Drained as he was, it felt good to take his weight off his legs and relax, even if he couldn’t be sure how long his stomach would cooperate.

Caspar nudged his shoulder. “Hey.”

Linhardt opened one eye to glance at him. “Hey.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Mmhm.”

“All this traveling…it’s everything I wanted it to be and more. Especially because I get to do it with you.” His hand found Linhardt’s thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze. “But I wonder sometimes…what we should do after.”

“After what?”

“After we see everything.”

Linhardt managed a soft laugh. “Caspar, even with your boundless enthusiasm and energy, I doubt there will ever come a day when we’ve seen _everything._ ”

“Well I know _that,_ but I mean…when we feel satisfied. With all this. Don’t you want to settle down one day? Somewhere quiet and peaceful…”

“It would hardly be quiet with you around,” Linhardt said, listlessly pressing his knee against Caspar’s with a tired smile. “But I’ve thought about it, yes. One day, I think I’d like that.”

When Linhardt caught Caspar’s eye again, his husband was _beaming,_ eyes sparkling in the sun, tiny wrinkles gathering around the corners of his eyes. “We could find somewhere nice and green, where you can nap in the sun all you want,” he said, grasping Linhardt’s hand. “I’ll put up a hammock for you, out in a nice little shady spot. And we could have a garden! And chickens!”

“Chickens?” Linhardt blinked.

“Yeah!”

“You want to raise chickens together.”

“Yeah!”

“Since when do you know the first thing about raising chickens?”

“Well I didn’t know the first thing about Almyra or Dagda before we went there either. And I didn’t know the first thing about being married until we started traveling together like this.” His thumb stroked along Linhardt’s knuckles, his smile never wavering. "But here we are."

Seemed this man was determined to settle down on a farm one day. And honestly, Linhardt could live with that. Quite contentedly in fact.

“So what do you say?” Caspar asked him, leaning in closer, Linhardt’s hand sandwiched between his calloused palms. “One day, when we’ve seen enough of the world to last us the rest of our lives, you wanna go somewhere quiet with me?”

“Yes,” Linhardt said. “I’d like that.”

Caspar grinned, pressing forward, lips barely brushing his before Linhardt pulled away and raised a hand to stop him.

“Did you forget I was just vomiting over the stern a few minutes ago.”

 _That_ finally made the smile flee from Caspar’s face. Just for a moment. “Oh…uh…right.”

The pinch in his brow an the flush on his cheeks made Linhardt laugh, queasiness be damned.

* * *

_A haphazardly set up camp in the middle a dark forest was not the place for this, but circumstances had given them little choice. With rain still coming down off and on outside, leaking into their tent whenever the wind picked up, Linhardt did what he could to keep Caspar’s bedroll dry. He could manage that, even if his own robes were a loss and he had long since resigned himself to being damp. Caspar couldn’t. Not now, at least._

_He pressed his knuckles against Caspar’s forehead and frowned. “You’re still burning up.”_

_Caspar had given up on trying to put on a brave face somewhere around sunset. His usual smile was replaced by a pained grimace, a flush on his cheeks and a sheen of sweat on his brow. Not to mention fear in his eyes whenever he managed to open them to glance blearily up at Linhardt._

_Oh, he tried to hide that much, but he was too weak to do much of anything besides shiver and whimper as Linhardt held the waterskin up to his chapped lips. “You need to drink,” Linhardt insisted when Caspar turned his head. He pressed a hand against Caspar’s cheek, thumb stroking his skin to urge him to listen. “Caspar. Drink.”_

_To his credit, he tried. Most of it dribbled down his chin and onto the blanket, but what little got down his throat would do him good._

_A scratch. Just a little scratch. Caspar had insisted it was nothing more than that as he’d wrapped his leg up with a scrap of fabric and shrugged off Linhardt’s offer of healing magic. Rationally, Linhardt knew it would have done little good. Neither of them could have known that the bandit’s blade had been laced with poison, and his magic would have done little to prevent this._

_Still…_

_“You should have let me heal you,” he chided, putting aside the waterskin and grabbing a cloth instead. Damp and cool. For once, that was a good thing. He pressed it to Caspar’s temple and wiped away the sweat. “But no, you had to plow on ahead like it was nothing. Didn’t even tell me when you started to feel lightheaded…I practically had to drag your stubborn ass back here to camp in the rain…”_

_“S-sorry,” Caspar managed to rasp, squeezing his eyes shut and whimpering when the cramping in his muscles worsened._

_Linhardt sighed. “Nothing to be done for it now.” He pressed his lips together, his voice more gentle when he asked, “How’s the pain?”_

_He expected Caspar to come up with one of his usual replies – to insist he could handle it, that it was nothing, that he could soldier on through anything because he was Caspar von Bergliez_ _and he was unstoppable. But instead, Caspar let a small, weak, pained noise and simply said, in a wavering voice, “Bad…”_

_Something in his tone – how broken and resigned it sounded – made Linhardt’s chest clench._

_Caspar curled tighter into himself, hands clutching the sad excuse for a blanket, shaking like a leaf in a storm, and Linhardt put the cloth down and instead ran a hand through Caspar’s sweaty hair. “Ssh,” he said. “Easy…this will pass, Caspar.”_

_“It hurts…”_

_“I know.”_

_“I’m cold…”_

_“I know.”_

_“Lin…if I don’t-“_

_“Don’t you dare.” Caspar managed to open his eyes, look at him through a mess of tangled hair. Linhardt cupped Caspar’s jaw in his hand, leaning down to press his nose against the crown of his head. “I know this poison, Caspar. It’s debilitating, painful, but not fatal. And I’m here…so don’t you start thinking like that. I would never let you die.”_

_Caspar’s hand curled around Linhardt’s arm, holding him tight – as tightly as he could manage at least, which was still downright feeble._

_The night was long and dark and cold and wet, but the rain let up by sunrise, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, Linhardt drifted off into a fitful, dreamless sleep. He awoke to the steady rise and fall of Caspar’s chest beneath his head, and blearily reached up to press a hand against his sweaty forehead._

_Caspar’s eyes blinked open, and Linhardt smiled. “Your fever’s broken,” he said._

_“Oh…” Caspar’s throat was rough, his voice like sandpaper. “Yeah.”_

_They lay there, dozing, listening to water drip from the leaves above them for an hour or two, until Caspar broke the silence again: “Hey Lin.”_

_“Mm.”_

_“How did you know what kind of poison the bandit was using anyway?"_

_Linhardt’s fingers curled against Caspar’s soaked shirt, closing his eyes and focusing on the steady beating of Caspar’s heart. Finally, after a long silence, he sighed and admitted, “I didn’t.”_

* * *

It seemed that instead of getting easier to handle, the rocking of the ship was only getting more intense with every passing hour. At Caspar’s insistence he sipped water where he could, even tried – _tried_ – to choke down some stale bread hoping it would settle his stomach, but it wound up floating away with the ocean current like the rest of his dignity. But as the wind picked up and wicked away the sweat from his brow, he felt a hand on his shoulder again.

“Linhardt.”

Oh, that was Caspar’s serious voice. His no-nonsense voice. His “something is wrong and we need to snap to attention right now” voice. Linhardt turned and met his eye, and worry settled in his gut when he saw fear sparking there under his bangs.

When had the sky gotten so dark? Sunset wasn’t due for another several hours yet.

Caspar answered the question before Linhardt even asked it, his voice wavering: “There’s a storm coming,” he said, and he swallowed. “They said we have to get below deck.”

A storm.

Out on the open ocean.

Lovely.

Below deck was, without a doubt, the _last_ place in the world that Linhardt wanted to be, especially with the wind rocking the ship with a vengeance and the sound of frantic shouts and pounding feet echoing in his ears. They descended in a haze, and Linhardt leaned against a barrel strapped tightly against the wall, pressing a hand over his mouth and groaning.

“This came out of nowhere,” Caspar mused, sounding far away and distracted. “It was all clear and then suddenly these dark clouds popped up and the wind started going crazy-“

“Don’t remind me,” Linhardt rasped.

“Hey-“ Caspar squeezed his hand, offering a nervous smile. “It’ll be okay.” A roll of thunder rumbled outside, the ship lurched underfoot, and Linhardt thought it must have been a miracle that he didn’t make a mess of their bunk then and there. But when he looked at Caspar again, he realized something that pulled his attention away from his twisting stomach.

Caspar wasn’t trying to convince him. He was trying to convince himself.

Linhardt pressed his palm against Caspar’s arm. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, it will.”

“R-right.” With a tight-lipped chuckle, Caspar started to fidget as the ship rocked and groaned underfoot. They could hear the surf pounding against the hull, the wind howling outside. And then came the rain, pouring down against the ship and battering it like an endless barrage of arrows.

And all of that, Linhardt could ignore, but he couldn’t possible ignore Caspar’s rapid breathing, darting eyes, clenched jaw…

“Caspar.”

“Yeah.”

“Caspar, come here.” Linhardt lowered himself onto the cot, his seasickness all but forgotten, and he reached out for him.

Caspar stumbled a bit as the ship rocked, but Linhardt’s hands found him, gripped him, pulled him close. And Caspar sank against his body, letting out a shaky sigh. “It came out of nowhere,” he muttered again. “A damn storm out of _nowhere._ ”

“That’s the nature of things at sea,” Linhardt said, and Caspar let out a half-formed laugh.

“Look at you, sounding like a regular sea captain.”

“A sea captain without his sea legs.” He didn’t miss the way that Caspar shivered against him, fingers clenching and unclenching against the material of Linhardt’s shawl. Linhardt pressed a hand against Caspar’s temple, ran his fingers through that messy mop of hair of his, just like Caspar had done for him when he’d been heaving his breakfast into the angry ocean.

Thunder, wind, driving rain…and all of it in the middle of the open ocean with nothing around them but the sea. Nothing below them but old, weathered wood and those _sharks_ that Caspar had been so kind to mention not long ago. No port in sight and nothing to ground them except each other.

Well, it was hardly the first time they’d faced such a feeling.

Linhardt gently scraped his nails along Caspar’s scalp, feeling his husband’s strong arms encircling him, holding on. “You said you wanted to raise chickens,” he found himself saying, and Caspar let out a shaky hum.

“Huh…what?”

“When we were done traveling,” Linhardt added. “You wanted to settle somewhere nice and quiet. Said you wanted chickens. I know you must have pictured more than that, so tell me about it…I want to know what it is you want for this picturesque little life of ours.”

Another hum, more thoughtful this time, though just as unsteady. And Caspars’s hands clutched at Linhardt’s shawl as the wind howled outside. “I have this picture in my head…of a little place on a hill. With lots of sun and trees and soft grass. Nothing fancy, you know? Just a roof over our heads and a soft bed we can always come back to.”

“Hm, and what would you do to me in that bed, I wonder?”

That made Caspar laugh. Just what he’d been hoping for. “You’re trying to seduce me _now_ of all times?” he snorted.

“Just curious.” Linhardt gently pressed Caspar’s head down against his chest. “Tell me more. About the cottage on the hill.”

“We’d have a library for you.”

“I don’t have many books nowadays.”

“We’ll collect them. Or maybe you could write them.”

“Mm…and a fireplace, I think. Somewhere to curl up in the winter to stay warm.”

“Yeah, and a garden for herbs and flowers. I don’t know the first thing about gardening, but I could learn. We could learn.” He held Linhardt close. So close that Linhardt wondered if he would ever let go. Right now, he didn’t particularly want him to. “It’s always sunny there in my head, ya know. Always sunny with you.”

He was still shaking, still jumped every time the ship lurched and the thunder rolled. But Linhardt could feel Caspar’s breathing with his hand pressed soothingly against his husband’s spine, could feel it syncing with his own without a single thought.

* * *

_Linhardt’s body was still buzzing when Caspar gently pressed him against the sheets, raining sleepy kisses all over his flushed chest and nuzzling the crook of his neck. His hands wandered up and down Linhardt’s ribs, across his hips, along his thighs, thumb catching against his hip bone. He was smiling as he brushed a sweaty curtain of hair from Linhardt’s eyes, his laugh brightening the flush of afterglow in his cheeks._

_“You’re amazing,” Linhardt hummed, so relaxed he wasn’t even sure if he’d said it aloud at all. But Caspar blinked in surprise, so he must have._

_“Me?”_

_“Yes.” Linhardt let an easy grin slip onto his face, pressing his hands against either side of Caspar’s jaw. “Amazing and stunning and so, so good to me.” With a contented sigh, Linhardt sank back against the pillows, letting his eyes slide closed. “Though I don’t think I’ll be able to walk much tomorrow.”_

_Caspar chuckled, keeping himself busy pressing kisses wherever he pleased on Linhardt’s bare chest. “We don’t need to go anywhere tomorrow at all,” he said. “Don’t even need to leave this bed.”_

_“I like the sound of that,” Linhardt replied as he ran his hand through Caspar’s hopelessly messy hair._

_Soon enough Caspar settled at Linhardt’s side, arms encircling him and nose pressed against Linhardt’s shoulder. Their breathing easily fell in sync, hands interlocked over Linhardt’s belly, and they watched a few stray clouds slowly disappear out of sight outside the window, making way for a clear night sky full of stars._

_They were married._

_They were married. _

_They hadn’t planned to do it like this, in a small town not too far from the border of Almyra. They had been talking about it of course, treating it like some far-off thing that would happen one day, when the time was right. Someday far in the future. But they had found themselves in a quiet little town with a chapel sitting on a magnificent cliff overlooking the ocean, and-_

_Well, one thing had led to another._

_And here they were, sharing a bed in the only inn in town, wrapped up in their afterglow with their marriage thoroughly consummated. It more than made up for the lack of rings at least a hundred times over. _

_Caspar’s lips tickled his shoulder as he spoke: “Hey Lin.”_

_“Mm.”_

_“I want to see Almyra.”_

_After a beat, Linhardt turned to face him, pressing their chests together. “We’re already close,” he said._

_“Yeah, but I don’t just want to go there and wander around a bit…I want to see Almyra. Like we’ve seen F_ _ódlan. I want to meet people and learn about the language and see as much of it as I can. As we can.” He grasped Linhardt’s hand, pressing it between their chests. “I want to see Almyra with you. Really see it.”_

_“Sounds to me like you want to move there,” Linhardt said with a raised brow, and oddly, saying that didn’t even set off a single twinge of anxiety in his gut. Maybe he was too wrapped up in bliss to care, or maybe the thought of exploring a new place with Caspar was an easy one to grasp. Natural._

_“Not forever, no. But…maybe for a bit. A year? Or two? We have time.”_

_“Hm…” Linhardt raised Caspar’s knuckles to his lips. “We do.”_

_“And hell, we know their king.”_

_“We do,” Linhardt laughed._

_“What do you say, Lin?” He snuggled closer, if that were even possible, until their lips were just barely a breath apart. “Come to Almyra with me? And everywhere after?”_

_Smiling, Linhardt closed the gap and pressed a kiss to Caspar’s waiting lips. “I’ve followed you this far,” he said. “I may as well.”_

* * *

They made landfall in Brigid, still alive and both in one piece, as the sun was starting to rise again on the horizon. The clouds had cleared, the storm far behind them, and Linhardt could have cried with relief when his feet finally touched solid ground again.

“I hope you know we’re going to have to live out the rest of our days here in Brigid,” he said. “Because I am _never_ setting foot on another ship for as long as I live.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Caspar sighed, his hand finding Linhardt’s quickly. He bit his lip, looking almost sheepish. “Hey Lin…thanks.”

“For?”

“You know.”

He did, but neither of them bothered saying anymore about it out loud. Linhardt pressed his palm against Caspar’s stubble-covered cheek, thumb stroking across the corner of his jaw. “I should be thanking you for holding my hair back as many times as you did.”

“Please. I’d have done it a hundred more times if I'd had to.” They walked hand in hand off the dock, bags slung over their shoulders. “If being married to you means holding your hair back while you puke every day for the rest of my life, I would do it no questions asked.”

“That’s…sweet. I think.”

“Which reminds me-“ Caspar stepped out in front of him, turning on his heel to face him and stretching his arms out wide. “Here we are in Brigid…a whole new place for us to see. New people, new food…You know what that means.”

“ _Please_ tell me that there’s not some rare hot pepper here that you want to shove down your throat to try and prove something.”

“No.” Without a second thought, Caspar sank to one knee in the dirt, ignoring the puzzled looks from passersby as he took Linhardt’s hand gently in his. “Linhardt-“

“Caspar.”

“Will you marry me again? Here in Brigid?”

Linhardt couldn’t have fought back a smile if he tried. He didn’t bother. “You know we really don’t have to do this every time we set foot in a new country.”

Caspar beamed up at him. “Yeah we do.”

Yes, they did.

Linhardt tugged him to his feet, pulling him in for a chaste kiss. “Then yes,” he said. “If you promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“I want this to be our last wedding.” He squeezed Caspar’s hands, fingers curling against his palms. “Because the next place we go, when we’re done seeing everything Brigid has to offer, I want to be that cottage on the hill that you told me about. With the library. And the hammock.”

"And the chickens?" He sounded hopeful.

"And the chickens."

“Yeah,” Caspar said. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

His smile was wide and bright, so warm that Linhardt could barely remember the harsh wind and rain of that storm at sea. Like Caspar was his port and his beacon to guide him to shore.


End file.
